Pan fried or cooked with onion and cheese, the German egg noodles called spätzle can have a healthy golden glow. For more than 300 centuries, spätzle has been an alpine culinary standard. The long strands of done are easily cut and divisible and a standard part of a southern German meal.

But a good monetary standard must be universally acceptable. Unfortunately in Germany spätzle is a source of division rather than unity, noted the New York Times’ Nicholas Kulish, who described the recent desecration with spätzle of a bronze statue of artist Kathe Kollwitz in Berlin.

Native Berliners are upset by the increasing numbers of well-off Swabians who have moved to the German capital from more prosperous southern Germany – pushing up prices and pushing out poorer Berliners. Swabia is generally considered the state of Baden-Württemberg and eastern Bavaria in the country’s southwest. “The swabians, for their part, resent their reputation as careptbaggers and the slights they have been forced to endure, with graffiti reading “Schwaben raus,’ or Swabians out,’ a slogan often directly at foreigners, an increasingly common sight,” wrote Kulish.

The statue protest was carried out by group called “Free Swabylon” which claimed to want independence for an area of East Berlin called Prenzlauer Berg that included the home of an outspoken critic of the Swabian invasion.

The critic, Wolfgang Thierse, the vice-president of Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, had said: “I hope the Swabians realize they are now in Berlin. And not in their little towns, with their spring cleaning...They come here because it’s all so colourful and adventurous and lively, but after a while, they want to make it like it is back home. You can’t have both.”

The Berliner Zeitung declared the statue defacers“dough terrorists.” Obviously, a good monetary standard should never be weaponized. Furthermore, gooey spätzle doesn’t travel well in one’s pockets. Eat it while it’s hot. But never in Berlin.